I had a phonecall at work from a friend the other day. He is trying to retain and maintain a relationship shattered by his girlfriend’s infidelity. The girlfriend is still in touch with the chap she had sex with that one time, and my friend wanted to know if he was being unreasonable in wanting her to stop the emails, or at the very least to stop actually telling him about them.
The answer I gave, of course, was no, you are not being unreasonable. I reminded him that this was a case of the pot calling the kettle a bit grubby; he’s had e-relationships of his own although, as he rightly pointed out, his e-relationships had not involved any actual fucking.
He then said that he did not dare say It’s him or me, on the grounds that she would choose him.
Whoooooooops-s-s. He’s right about the outcome but wrong about the reason for it. As I pointed out, he’d say him or me, and she’d hear control or independence, and choose independence, the irony being that her independent intelligence is one of the things that makes her so attractive.
I doubt very much that this is about him at all; I suspect it may be about her previous relationship and that he is just the poor sap who’s around while she spreads her wings and flaps around. Personally, I think she is being discourteous and cruel and that this is a self-indulgence which she should give up, however he is the last person in the world who can ask it of her. I do admire him for thinking about it though and understanding the subtleties of what is going on, and it is fascinating watching him mature through this.
But oh dear. Oh dearie dearie dear.
3 responses so far ↓
Reed // October 3, 2006 at 2:43 pm |
Oh very dear indeed.
As a naughty girl who did have a fling with Another Man (who looked disarmingly like Leonardo di Caprio) myself, I have to say I am still flabbergasted. Yes, OK, relationships sometimes go tits-up and I refuse to accept that the cheater is invariably the villain of the piece. But if you are going to then try and Sort Things Out with the poor cuckold, you do not, DO NOT, keep in touch with your flingathing. Even if your original partner, for whatever reason, jolly well deserved the brute slap-in-kisser of having you prove them eminently replaceable. And even if, as I said, the original deserved it, you still have to find some way of proving that you are worth the effort, sacrifice of pride, pain, and rage you are putting her/him through. After all, it may have been psychologically necessary to have a fling, but it is never psychologically necessary to be discourteous and play games with your hapless, bleeding, struggling, enraged and frightened mouse.
Harrumph.
Aphra Behn // October 3, 2006 at 4:39 pm |
Well, things are a little more civilised there since I wrote that, (some of my posts have a rather considerable blog-lag, I’m afraid), but they are probably more definite and sadder. Watching people grow older and wiser is a painful business, and it always amazes me how much faster other people do it than I do.
Leonardo de Caprio? Well, I’m sure he was very nice dear.
AB
Reed // October 4, 2006 at 8:29 pm |
Possibly also another major reason that I never had anything to do with him ever again.
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